Woozle effect

专有名词
中文释义
英 /ˈwuːz(ə)l ɪˈfɛkt/    美 /ˈwuz(ə)l əˈfɛkt/

英文释义

专有名词
  1. The phenomenon whereby frequent citation of earlier publications leads to a mistaken public belief in something for which there is no evidence, giving rise to an urban myth.
    — One general problem is what [Beverly] Houghton (1979) calls the "Woozle Effect" (based on a Winnie the Pooh story). The "Woozle Effect" begins when one investigator reports a finding, such as Gelles's (1974) report that 55 percent of his sample of families reported one instance of conjugal violence in their marriage. The investigator may provide qualifications to the findings. [...] In the "Woozle Effect," a second investigator will then cite the first study's data, but without the qualifications (such as done by Straus, 1974a). Others will then cite both reports and the qualified data gain the status of generalizable "truth."

词源

A reference to the book Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) by English author A. A. Milne (1882–1956), in which the characters Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet follow their own tracks in the snow, believing them to be the tracks of the imaginary “Woozle”. The term in its precise form is believed to have been coined by Beverly Houghton in a paper entitled Review of Research on Women Abuse delivered at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, 7–10 November 1979: see the 1980 quotation. However, earlier mentions of the Woozle in this context exist.
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